Baroness Warsi and the demons of hate

A Cabinet minister spoke at a meeting of a group which is boycotted by her own
Government for its promotion of terrorist recruiters and its “failure to
fully challenge terrorist and extremist ideology”.

Baroness Warsi, the minister for faith and communities, addressed an event staged by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) last month to attack the “demonisation” of Muslim students by the media.

FOSIS has hosted numerous extremist and terrorist speakers at its annual conference and other events, including Azzam Tamimi, who supports suicide bombing, Haitham al-Haddad, who believes that music is a “prohibited and fake message of love and peace”, and Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda recruiter described as a key inspiration for three of the 9/11 hijackers and numerous later attacks.

Several convicted terrorists have been officers of university Islamic societies affiliated to FOSIS and have attended its events.

FOSIS has been condemned by Baroness Warsi’s colleagues, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, for its failure to “fully challenge terrorist and extremist ideology”.

Mrs May ordered that the Civil Service withdraw from a graduate recruitment fair held by FOSIS and has refused to meet the organisation’s leaders.

Khobaib Hussain, one of the Birmingham men sentenced last week for his part in a terrorist plot, described by police as the “biggest since 7/7”, was a student at Wolverhampton University at the time of his arrest.

Before he was detained, members of the university’s Islamic society, which is affiliated to FOSIS, posted online comments stating that “nothing is more honourable than dying for the cause of Islam” and that “America’s time will come”, though it is not known whether Hussain was a member of the society or was radicalised at the university.

At the FOSIS event with Lady Warsi, in the House of Lords on March 25, the minister, who attends Cabinet and is a former chairman of the Conservative Party, supported claims by FOSIS that extremism was “no more prevalent” in universities than in any other parts of society.

In fact, however, in the last month alone, according to the anti-extremism group Student Rights, there have been at least 10 incidents on British campuses involving Islamic extremist speakers or the promotion of extremist ideology to students.

Last Sunday, a group barred as racist and extremist by the National Union of Students, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, held a meeting at Queen Mary, a campus of the University of London. The event was the third in recent weeks at British universities where compulsory gender segregation was enforced on men and women.

On March 24, the day before the meeting with Baroness Warsi, FOSIS organised an event at Imperial College for sixth-formers with Hamza Tzortzis, an extremist who has called for the killing of apostates and rejected freedom of speech.

The organisation he runs, iERA, was banned from University College London last month after it attempted to enforce gender segregation. Separate telephone numbers for registration were given for men and women at the Imperial College event, suggesting that it, too, had forced segregation.

FOSIS has recently organised or co-organised a number of other compulsorily-segregated events. On March 22, it co-organised a “Learning to Love” event in Edmonton, north London, promoting Islamic morality in relationships.

Although the event was supposed to advise young Muslims how to get on with the opposite sex, it was advertised by the other partner, Al Waqiah, as “fully segregated” between men and women.

Another event by FOSIS with “segregated seating” was held at the Waterlily Centre, Mile End, on December 20 last year.

Pictures of the group’s recent winter conference and other events, including a “leadership training course”, suggest that they are also segregated.

“For those who believe that extremism on our university campuses is an issue that we cannot afford to ignore, to see government figures working alongside those who promote extremist narratives is deeply concerning,” said Raheem Kassam, of Student Rights.

FOSIS’s president, Omar Ali, aims to control all Muslim students in British universities. In a blogpost at the time of his appointment, he says the organisation should “turn the cogs” of university Islamic societies, which should in “turn the larger cog of Muslim students on their campuses”.

Baroness Warsi was joined at the event by Nicola Dandridge, the head of Universities UK, which represents all British universities.

She too claimed that extremism was no greater a problem in universities than anywhere else and praised FOSIS for its work on “community cohesion”.

Baroness Warsi’s involvement with FOSIS comes more than two years after David Cameron, the Prime Minister, promised to cut off public funding for, and political contact with, groups which supported extremism.

However, accounts published in recent weeks reveal that many bodies closely linked to extremism continued to enjoy substantial public funding in 2012.

Beneficiaries include the East London Mosque, paid at least £150,000 last year alone, and the Osmani Trust, which received around £600,000.

Both organisations are controlled by the Islamic Forum of Europe, which works to change the “very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed from ignorance to Islam” in a “global” Islamic state under Sharia law.

The mosque has hosted numerous hate and terrorist preachers, including al-Awlaki. Only last week, however, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, attended a forum with representatives of the East London Mosque and other faith groups.

A spokesman for Lady Warsi said: “Baroness Warsi attended a Parliamentary event at the House of Lords, alongside other Parliamentarians and the NUS President, to specifically discuss tackling anti-Muslim hatred, a key priority for the coalition Government.

“As the Minister has stated on many occasions, the Government will not tolerate extremism, hatred or intolerance in any form, against any community.”